Monday, April 4, 2011

Thank you all for your sweet comments and advice! I really, really appreciate your support! Injuries (as most of you know) are difficult both physically and emotionally. An update on my leg is that it was feeling MUCH better today, so I thought I could take a low impact aerobics class. So, I took a half hour abs class followed by a step class, BAD IDEA! About halfway through the class my injury hurt, so I stopped. I guess I wasn't as pain free as I thought.

Anyways...on to some good news. Saturday night Evan and I had a nice date night to celebrate...well, nothing. We went to Riccardos Ristorante in the North End. We had a 25$ gift from Restaurant.com and decided Saturday was a perfect time to use it.

Evan and I had dined here once before for a birthday party and really enjoyed the food. The inside decor was similar to many of the other restaurants in the North End, but a little more casual.

We started with a bottle of Chianti Classico from a favorite winery: Ruffino

This bottle was pretty good, but not incredible. Good table wine to go with Italian food, but not amazing. We started with the spinach salad with candied pecans, pancetta and Parmesan cheese.

The salad came with a house made honey mustard and I asked the waiter for it on the side. Our waiter was not very good and had a hard time understanding our requests. And he brought us a red wine vinaigrette on the side. When I asked for the house made dressing he again did not know what we were talking about and it took him about 10 minutes to figure it out. When the dressing finally arrived the salad was great! I liked all the different flavors, especially the fresh Parmesan.

For my entree, I of course got the salmon (this has been my thing this past month), maybe I am having an Omega deficiency and my body is trying to tell me something......

The salmon was prepared with lemon, capers and a white wine on the sauce. It was AMAZING, by far my favorite salmon of the past month. I LOVED this flavor combo and the fish was VERY fresh!! I just LOVED it and it was only $19! Not bad for the North End!!!

Evan ordered the veal Parmesan

This was also very good (I had a few bites). I enjoyed the sauce and the veal was prepared well. Overall, our dining experience at Riccardo's was good; the food was reasonably priced, they had reasonably priced wine, the food was VERY good, but the service was bad. The waiter even forgot to bring us bread, until we asked twice.

Even though we couldn't move after dinner, we didn't want our night to end. So, we went up to Top of the Hub on the 52nd floor of the Prudential Center for a little music and one final drink.

Once we arrived the band was in full swing.

and I enjoyed a lemon and ginger martini.

Wow was this strong, but GOOD!!! A great night with amazing company!!!! I hope you had a good weekend!!

3 comments:

Oh so fun! I lived in the North End for two years but I never went to Ricardo's! My absolute favorite is Carmen, it's super tiny and absolutely delicious! It's tucked away near Paul Revere's house on North St :)

So glad that you are feeling better, I'm so relieved! Do you think you'll still run Doyle's 5 miler this weekend? If so definitely let me know! I would love to meet up and catch up :)

PS I have recently gotten into hot yoga (more like "semi hot" compared to bikram or baptiste) at South Boston Yoga. I feel like most studios have a "yoga for runners" class (or at least a 1 day clinic type thing) where they do a good job getting non-yogi's into the practice and stretching tight muscles from running. I didn't go to yoga at all last summer when I was training for Chicago and I am convinced that's why I ended up injured and having to miss the marathon! Sorry for the book, I can tell you more about it this weekend or at another race :)

Lady, I'm glad that you're hard at work mending. I definitely recommend yoga (like Endless Runner) to occupy your time while you heal. It's really not the same, but it will definitely help you tone in a way that will be beneficial to your running.

Separately, what is with the craving lately? I feel like all of us have had our bodies hijacked! You're hittin' the salmon, I'm all over the sweet potatoes, I think another girlfriend was killin' it with the apricots. There's just something about springtime, I suppose.

About Me

Welcome! My name is Lauren and I was born and raised in the Boston area, so being a sports fan was a requirement. However, I was always the girl on the soccer field playing with butterflies instead of focusing in on the game. Needless to say I was not very athletic and therefore a little heavy in middle school. As I entered high school I was determined to get fit and healthy, but I needed a little push. That was when I discovered running. I ran my first race (5K) with my mom and could barely finish it. It has been a long and bumpy road since that first race with a lot of injuries, success, and failures. My ultimate goal is to run the Boston Marathon, but I am a little scared. Again, I need a little push which leads me to this blog. This blog will chronicle my training and races and hopefully push me to run the Boston Marathon (and other marathons) by April 2012.